Transporting items, objects, or materials (collectively and generally referred to herein as “packages” whether the items, objects, or materials are wrapped in packaging material or the items, objects, or materials are being shipped without packaging material) is an important part of commerce. In some instances, the type of item being transported may involve an item, object, or material that may be caustic, flammable, incendiary (e.g., easy to catch fire), or have a composition that inherently may pose some danger when transporting the item, object or material. For example, the transportation and shipment for certain types of batteries (e.g., lithium-based or lithium-ion batteries) may incur the risk of creating an environmental anomaly (such as a fire, explosion, chemical leak, or radiation leak).
Common techniques for monitoring the condition of what is being shipped within a shipping container may involve sensors remote from the shipping container. Such monitoring techniques may be located too far away, which may cause a lag or undesirable delay in detecting any type of environmental anomaly associated with what is being shipped or just maintained within the shipping container (e.g., a unit load device (ULD) type of container, an intermodal shipping container, a palletized containment for shipping one or more packages, a storage facility that may temporarily maintain packages as a non-mobile type of shipping container, and the like). Such an environmental anomaly may involve extremely hot and caustic conditions that may rapidly spread. As a result, any delay in detecting such an environmental anomaly is inherently risky and adverse environmental conditions may rapidly intensify and spread so as to cause damage to the package, container, other packages in the container, other nearby containers, the transit vehicle transporting the container, and possible injury and loss of life to those operating the transit vehicle or manipulating the shipping container. Furthermore, any delay in assessing the risk from such an environmental anomaly as well as putting a mediation plan into action to address the environmental anomaly also increases the undesired severity of any environmental anomaly and its ability to rapidly intensify, spread so as to cause rapid damage to the package, container, other packages in the container, other nearby containers, the transit vehicle transporting the container, and possible injury and loss of life to those operating the transit vehicle or manipulating the shipping container
Accordingly, those skilled in the art will appreciate that when transporting certain types of items, objects, and materials, the ability to quickly detect any environmental anomaly is important as time is of the essence. This is even more true when transporting packages (e.g., items, objects, materials) on aircraft where the existence of any environmental anomaly may be catastrophic in the damage it causes and loss of property and life due to any delay in detecting such an environmental anomaly, as well as any resulting delay in causing or initiating a response or mediation action to address the detected anomaly.
To address these requirements, a variety of systems, apparatus, and methods are needed that may improve and enhance environmental anomaly detection—especially, onboard a shipping container with one or more packages—and improve how to respond to such a detected environmental anomaly. Thus, there remains a need for improved systems, apparatus, and methods that may provide more extensive and robust detection of an environmental anomaly and automated generation of layered alerts and adaptive initiation of one or more mediation responses in a more timely and integrated manner than previously thought possible.